Getting tired of it

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rubenwardy
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Re: Getting tired of it

by rubenwardy » Post

So, in an attempt to turn this thread productive: what can be done to increase organisation? What do open source projects similar to us do?

Godot is considerably larger than Minetest, and has a few paid employers, but something can be learned from their project manager role: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-p ... gement-101

I have suggested delegating issue triage before - labelling, asking for more info, deduplicating, prioritising. This is one well-defined aspect of project management, and would be helpful. Not that project management as in assigning PRs and issues isn't unhelpful, it's just harder to do and define, still thinking about that
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Re: Getting tired of it

by maikerumine » Post

I have some good advice.

Just do your own thing and enjoy it. Take breaks. Realise that even if you were to make something great, it may never be noticed, just do it anyway and learn from it.

Pretty sad advice, but if you like to learn, like to make things, then just do it. Even make a server to test your things out and get feedback.

You seem talented as F^<4, Keep on jamming man.
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Re: Getting tired of it

by Zughy » Post

rubenwardy wrote:
Thu Oct 01, 2020 23:36
So, in an attempt to turn this thread productive: what can be done to increase organisation? What do open source projects similar to us do?
I'm going to reply only because I don't want to be the cause of another burnout, I see how much you care and, weird or not, I care about you too, so these are my two cents.
As far as I'm concerned, considering the circumstances, nothing really. It seems to me you're the only one who wants to try doing something, about these aspects at least; you just said you have no time to dedicate to Minetest and yet you're here trying and fixing things up. I saw you trying on IRC too (1) (2). So I ask you: where are the others? You can even do the impossible, but Minetest is still huge and you're still one.

For me, Minetest started with "that rubenwardy guy on Mastodon". I had no idea who celeron was, I just saw this British guy and, looking deeper, how many things he was doing. I was basically scared by the amount of it, because usually I'm the one doing the impossible. I don't even think you being the only one I have talked with outside of the forum was a coincidence (well, aside that time I apologised to a core dev). And if I stop and think about it, you're the one behind the CTF server, the one behind ContentDB, the modding book, Mastodon, NodeBoxEditor, the menu reworking, the Minetest stand at Freenode #Live, the CERN collaboration. You're also - along with v-rob - the only one who spent his time commenting here, the only one who said he was thinking about me as a core artist and, I want to underline, you're also the reason I waited for writing something like this, because I realise it would have been annoying. But, again, there is no one else who's putting this level of attention and efforts about what happens outside of the code as much as you. And if, what, 3-4 years of development didn't change that, what exactly makes you believe more organisation will? You can't change people when they don't want to. You can change environment though

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Re: Getting tired of it

by kay27 » Post

freshreplicant wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:31
Zughy wrote:
Mon Sep 28, 2020 14:01
Maybe all the fun happens in the unofficial Discord
The Dev stuff is on IRC, but much of the interaction with devs from outside occurs through the Discord-IRC bridge.
Sorry for interrupting and especially for off topic but I need to ask: WHY...???

I tried IRC once in 1996. It wasn't convenient through dial up. Fidonet and email were much easier: perfect addressing, storing, you can't miss important things... IRC didn't became better at my first glance... Then there were forums, browser-based chats, internet messengers, social networks... Telegram channels and Discord novadays... Does somebody forces developers to get stuck with IRC? :)

Sorry again, I'm not English language expert and maybe just don't realize the something but I'd really like to

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Re: Getting tired of it

by jas » Post

IRC is not comparable to email or Fidonet. Also, a lot of us have been using it since 1996, or sooner.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by TechWarrior » Post

Really glad to see this conversation happening. It sounds as though the problems may well be surmountable given the turnaround that Godot experienced as referenced by Ruben. It seems conceivable to me that it could be replicated with some effort. https://github.com/buildaworldnet/IrrlichtBAW, https://github.com/Zylann/voxelgame, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJtRJz9 ... I&index=10 https://www.pcgamer.com/dysis-is-a-voxe ... g-support/ and are examples of what I think Minetest should be able to accommodate.

I have zero artistic or programming skills but I do read quickly. Would it help if I go through the pull requests with an eye to surfacing some high impact ones, per v-rob? Or is there another suggestion for something I can do to help as a non-developer.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by celeron55 » Post

Zughy wrote:
Fri Oct 02, 2020 13:06
So I ask you: where are the others?
I've been reading this thread, but don't have much to say.

For me the hardest part in delegating is I'm not a social person and don't know people. It's been a problem for 10 years already, so as you can imagine what you're saying had gotten old to me before you even began. That's also why I don't personally run any social media accounts for the project. That's simply just not my thing.

I'm not hesitant to do organization changes when someone who I trust to understand the human resources aspect proposes them to me.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by Termos » Post

Imo the most important thing small projects like this require is single leadership, which isn't happening as the previous speaker obviously isn't active anymore.
Even a single developer can do better than ten random people with conflicting ideas.

Things might get better if he managed to find a competent person he trusts to run the project for him,
but it's well past fork time anyway.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by Zughy » Post

So, in these days I've been talking with old community members and they helped me realising how a fork is suicidal. That brought me to write a suggestions list the other day, which I then handed to ruben a couple hours before the meeting. It basically felt like the only thing I was able to do. This is the document:
https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/o4 ... miuYhSykw/

A part of the roadmap was discussed at the meeting, no trace of the rest though. Personally, that's not enough for me, which brought me to start keeping the distance from the development and starting to look for other projects to contribute, because it helped me realising even more there's not much I can do, especially not without ending up stressed in the long run (with little to no changes in the project). I also don't realise how a meeting can take place on IRC, when I use to talk with my friends on Jitsi more or less twice a week about the server we've been developing. Anyway, if the list can be useful to someone, It's there

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Re: Getting tired of it

by Linuxdirk » Post

Zughy wrote:
Mon Sep 28, 2020 14:01
In the 7 months I've been here, I've never felt part of the Minetest community. Because, to me, there was no community to perceive in the first place.
Yes, it is really hard to build a community out of what we have. Basically the forums is a collection of random people either having problems or questions.

We have no community activities like a regular Q&A session with the devs (once a month or every 2-3 months would be absolutely fine and still better than nothing), any of the devs (except 2-3 devs who are active in the forums) being actually active and interacting with the community. Back in the Mojang days Minecraft developers where super active on Twitter posting mnultiple statements daily on there documenting and informing the Minecraft development. Even now they occasionally post about their development activities. Yes, the Minecraft developers get paid. That’s not the point. They interact with their community.

It’s all about community interaction when you want to actually build a community and not just have a bunch people who ask questions. If you want people to bond it’s important that they have have same memories. This is why community events are so important. Heck, there isn’t even an official server where people could get memories on!

We have a forum that randomly crashes or becomes unresponsive every few hours, a meaningless website, a problem solving forum, and an issue tracker where a lot of issues are ignored or discussed until being dead. This is not how to build a community. It all leads to the official user interaction things are basically an understaffed servicedesk with 98% unaffiliated volunteers and a few core developers.
Zughy wrote:
Mon Sep 28, 2020 14:01
For instance, one of them didn't know about dual wielding on Minecraft, something that's been implemented since early 2016. More than four years ago.
… and as always it continues with the information that it would require API changes. Yes for fucks sake! Most things require API changes. This is what happens in development. Things change when they evolve. Where basically on 0.4.x level with everything. Sure, there was added some sugar here and there and they put a cherry on top. But basically nothing really changed since a couple of years.
Zughy wrote:
Mon Sep 28, 2020 14:01
And then there is, that moment. Where you stop tapping and ask yourself: "Is it really worth it? Does it really matter?" and I fear the answer is no.
I came to this point some time ago and I told you before: I really don’t care anymore about Minetest development. I tried to be nice, I tried to be angry, I tried to find out relevant stuff by creating issues, I made suggestions worded nice, angry, and technical. Nothing helped. Most was ignored, a lot was rejected because “iT neEds aN eNgiNE cHangE”. So I stopped caring and now all I do is fixing things for myself using mods or changing core files of my local installation.

I’m happey like never before since I stopped caring. Sure, I sometimes do tainting statements or tease people. But that’s just what I do sometimes. In the end I really don’t care and just do with Minetest what I like to do. If “they” think it’s okay to have nearly a thousand open issues on GitHub, fine, have it so. No community interaction? Okay, I get it, you don’t have time for or don’t want to have an actual community. Great, I’m here with my mods, my stupid little let’s play, and my local improvements.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:35
Code review is not the problem but the most of the time in this “review process”
I don’t know if Microsoft offers such tools for their GitHub website, but 99% auf code review is linting. Linting can be done completely automated once set up and configured as needed. When done properly code style is 100% irrelevant for PRs because the autolinter changes it as needed for easy integration.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:35
A lot of problems might be solved if only the PR reviewing process would be more efficient.
As said: Code review could be automated to nearly 100% when it comes to syntax and code style. So all that needs to be reviewed is functionality. This would lift a metric shit-ton of work from the developers when it comes to dealing with PRs.

Also PRs and issues need to be dealt with way more aggressive. Do a review as soon as possible and auto-close after a 3-4 weeks if the requester does not give feedback. Same with issues. Try do confirm the issue in a clean build identical to the build the issue creator uses (should be easy to get the correct version from the build server). If confirmed: Assign an SLA (or call it whatever you want). If not confirmed ask the issue creator for details. If there is no feedback after 3-4 weeks: close. If the request runs out of the SLA (or whatever it’s called) without any activity close due to lack of time/interest.

Same with suggestions: Have a quick vote on whether to approve or do not approve. If there are not enough votes with in 3-4 weeks it’s automatically rejected and being closed due to lack of time/interest. Otrherwise same rules as for issues apply.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:35
THIS IS BAD, because it's EXTREMELY demoralizing for any potential contributors.
Of course it is. So are open issues that are open since 2011.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:35
You mentioned dual wielding. True, the engine cannot do it right now. But you need to understand this is a extremely specific gameplay mechanic that's specific to Minecraft only.
A medieval role playing adventure game done for the Minetest engine would benefit from it (dual-wielded swords for example, or a shield and an single-wielded sword). So would do a racing game (steering and shifting gears). Or a fighting game (left/right punch combinations, optionally with different weapons). Or puzzle/reaction games that need you to use two different things very quick or at the same time.

And yes, some Minecraft-like games would also benefit form dual-wield capabilities in the engine in the same way as Minecraft does. I don’t see why we should NOT have this option just because Minecraft has it.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:35
For example, mods could be allowed to add arbitrary wieldhands to the HUD (representing different inventory slots) and leave the implementation details up to the mods.
Exactly! But “enGiNe chANGe neEdeD” so it won’t happen ever.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:35
Minetest is meant as an engine for voxel games (not just Minecraft clones!). The goal is to have an engine that is more or less generic for most types of games (as long it's about voxels!), and not force one specific genre.
Like Godot with the Voxel-Core module or godot_voxel, but with limited capabilities and using the pretty much dead Irrlicht graphics engine for rendering without even multi-color light sources or shadows? Doesn’t sound like a good vision to me. Why should a freshly starting game developer use Minetest over any other engine that can handle voxels?

Minetest is great for creating Minetest Game like games or games that use similar mechanics (i.e. run a round in voxel world and interact with the voxels using tools) and that do not need fast loading of the world and are not so heavy that they need to rely on delayed loading of things and that all happen in the same rather small world and not having an enormous view range (testing it some time ago showed that the engine chokes on loading things more than 500-1000 nodes away).
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:35
Finally, the website should have a news section.
The website should be completely overhauled with fresh new screenshots and a design that looks like a website for a fun multi-game engine and not like a boring office applications with multiple years old, outdated screenshots. But I can already hear the devs: “nO onE mAde A puLL ReqUesT fOr uPdaTinG thE wEbsiTe sO fAr”.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by rubenwardy » Post

Zughy wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 14:21
A part of the roadmap was discussed at the meeting, no trace of the rest though.
I didn't want to overload with everything there, so I want with the most actionable
Zughy wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 14:21
I also don't realise how a meeting can take place on IRC, when I use to talk with my friends on Jitsi more or less twice a week about the server we've been developing.
Because not all developers can speak good English, but they can read and write English. And because IRC is our current official chat room

Linuxdirk wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 14:33
The website should be completely overhauled with fresh new screenshots and a design that looks like a website for a fun multi-game engine and not like a boring office applications with multiple years old, outdated screenshots. But I can already hear the devs: “nO onE mAde A puLL ReqUesT fOr uPdaTinG thE wEbsiTe sO fAr”.
Minetest is a community project, if you spend half as much effort actually fixing the website as you do complaining about the website then all your problems will be fixed
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Re: Getting tired of it

by Linuxdirk » Post

rubenwardy wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 14:44
Minetest is a community project, if you spend half as much effort actually fixing the website as you do complaining about the website then all your problems will be fixed
From all that was written in the whole thread this is all you can come up with?

There is also a multiple 100 pages long screenshots thread. You just need to go to a random page of that thread and take a handful of screenshots to use on the website.

But whatever, dude.
Last edited by Linuxdirk on Sun Oct 04, 2020 15:00, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by rubenwardy » Post

I've responded to this thread multiple times
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Re: Getting tired of it

by Linuxdirk » Post

rubenwardy wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 15:00
I've responded to this thread multiple times
But have you understood the point of it? It’s not “them vs. us” or “whoever has the better arguments is the winner”.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by maikerumine » Post

I ran out of popcorn, BRB. ;-)
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Re: Getting tired of it

by Termos » Post

Zughy wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 14:21
So, in these days I've been talking with old community members and they helped me realising how a fork is suicidal.
Do you mean anything other than the obvious - social suicide resulting from tremendous time investment required?

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Re: Getting tired of it

by Zughy » Post

Termos wrote:
Tue Oct 06, 2020 17:09
Zughy wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 14:21
So, in these days I've been talking with old community members and they helped me realising how a fork is suicidal.
Do you mean anything other than the obvious - social suicide resulting from tremendous time investment required?
Yes, it's not just time, not just yours at least. First of all, you need pretty qualified developers: they need to know C++, Irrlicht, Lua. Now, let's say you do find them: they have to understand how these three things have been blended together on Minetest through the years, and it's no easy task. Especially because as far as I know code is a mess right now, so it'd also mean cleaning it up. If someone wants to consider it, I'd suggest to wait till 5.4, as core devs said they're aiming to clean the code as much as they can for the release.
Then you need people who're willing to follow you, as a community: according to old projects like Freeminer, Final Minetest and Classic Minetest to name a few, that simply doesn't happen all of a sudden, or... well, it just doesn't happen. You need to show people your fork is the real deal and that takes time (and efforts) too. The only pretty solid fork the guy who I talked with was able to link me is MoNTE48's MultiCraft, which is focused on Android. But nonetheless, it's still more of a niche than Minetest. Also, not being the shadow of the original Minetest could be quite difficult to achieve.
Then you need to be constant: managing an engine requires years, so either you really like the idea or just you don't want to do it in the long run (hence I said "I'll be more than happy to build it with you" and not "Join me"). Especially if no one is helping you, finding yourself all alone with this leviathan.

In short, it's time, efforts, patience, teamwork, constance, planning, vision, community. In my opinion it's easier to push for some changes in the original one or just forget about Minetest in its entirety.

Or, well, having a decent amount of pissed off determined people willing to do their part to actually fork it

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Re: Getting tired of it

by Termos » Post

Zughy wrote:
Tue Oct 06, 2020 19:20
Yes, it's not just time, not just yours at least. First of all, you need pretty qualified developers: they need to know C++, Irrlicht, Lua.
Everyone seems to think about management first, I don't believe that's the way to start.
What a fork would need in the beginning is quality development time of a single individual who can handle that kind of thing.

Sure, it's damn difficult, time consuming and most people aren't even up to the task,
but some are, and it wouldn't be that bad as it'd seem if you extrapolated it from MT.
See MT is about 1% doing and 99% yapping, to get an one-liner in one has to wade through lakes of nonsense for months, and being able to make any needed fundamental changes is just unthinkable.
But imagine it's just you and the code, no restrictions, free to do anything, nobody around to be annoying and waste your time, you can just think-do-rinse-repeat.
Eventually, when the project starts to take shape and some of the intended stuff works, then it's probably the time to go public and maybe accept others' assistance.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by ttamttam » Post

As a simple lurker, it looks pretty demeaning to me. The open source mantra is really "If you don't like something, I'll call you lazy so I don't have to think about it."
Open source can and should be collaborative. There are some simple things that can be done to help with that. For example, make dev teams, such as art team, gui and ux team, code team, community outreach team. All of these teams would have access to github approve pull requests.
If you don't like the speed at which pull requests are done and you're a core dev, don't merge your own changes. Have another dev look it over and approve it with the rest of the PR's. Waiting for your pull to get approved as a dev? Review other community members pulls. Implementing this rule will also allow you to take on more devs, as even core dev submissions will have two pairs of eyes to look through the code, therefore you don't have to trust your dev team to be amazing or have a lot of time, just that they use good practices, stay in scope, and aren't malicious.
Github can also be setup to organize tasks based on tags, if it's important that bugs and enhancements are separated, force users to add tags and do your work from the todo lists instead.
Additionally, give community members roles for contributing, everyone loves getting a little badge or a new title, and people who don't know how to code or do art would likely be encouraged if they were recognized for contributing community involvement, documentation, or testing.
But that's just my perspective as an outsider. Maybe I'm way off.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by Mantar » Post

ttamttam wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 00:26
As a simple lurker, it looks pretty demeaning to me. The open source mantra is really "If you don't like something, I'll call you lazy so I don't have to think about it."
Nah, a good open source project is a simple meritocracy, where work matters and talk kinda doesn't. Minetest seems to be too far on the talky side to qualify as one though.
don't merge your own changes
This is a good rule in general, merging your own changes is a bad idea for code quality. But in Minetest's case, where you can't count on anybody reviewing your PR anytime soon, I can see why it happens.
Instituting a rule against merging your own code might encourage a culture of PR review among the other MT devs, or it might just grind everything to a sudden halt.

What they really need is like what Cataclysm: Dark Days ahead has in ZhilkinSerg, RivetTheZombie, and a couple of others who regularly spend a chunk of their time just reviewing PRs. They're worth their weight in gold. It's not clear how you attract one, though.
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Re: Getting tired of it

by runs » Post

Minetest is running around like a headless chicken. :-D

It is a decadent and languishing project. And everyone sees that. It happens to many Open Source projects. Yes, guys, money moves the world.

Well, something improved this last year. I have noticed something.

PD: And please stay away from the Discord, it is a haven for psychopathic and bullying personalities.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by Andrey01 » Post

runs wrote:
Mon Oct 12, 2020 11:14
Minetest is running around like a headless chicken. :-D

It is a decadent and languishing project. And everyone sees that. It happens to many Open Source projects. Yes, guys, money moves the world.

Well, something improved this last year. I have noticed something.

PD: And please stay away from the Discord, it is a haven for psychopathic and bullying personalities.
I agree with you. Some regress has been foreshadowed already many years ago. When I first joined it and it was around the end of 2013, I had been seeing plenty of different coming features, especially to MTG. Now I have not seen such anymore and I seem this situation had been becoming after 5.0.0 release. Very few new features/content and if they succeed to come in from some contributors, they pass a painfull way via hanging out untouched for months and even years while somebody of the core devs don`t get stirred to review it and conclude finally. So far even such the MOST common features come as "highlighting button when hovered/pressed" (this visual feedback has not even not added for all gui elements yet !) or "additional option to conceal the selection box when hovered an entity". Of course I don`t blame those authors, just these facts already say about the stagnation state.

However, Minetest actually has a huge potential of development because this is free open project and currently has many advantages over its the original game, but it mostly delays for those reasons above. Regardless all these serious drawbacks, I love this project. It really possesses the infinite opportunities.

----------------------

Probably this my comment is already not interesting to anybody, I suppose because of this has already been talked out more than one hundred times by various people through of a mass of different previous threads with the similar topic, but I just wanted to express my point.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by freshreplicant » Post

I am actually more optimistic about Minetest as time goes on. I think there has been significant movement on the PR and organisational front in recent months (perhaps partly spurred on by expressions such as this post) and though the community is quite small it is quite vibrant. There are also lots of potential avenues for improvement, depending on developer and community interest. Also, on a foundational level, playing around with mods in MT, though rough around the edges, is really fun and engrossing. There are also quite a few really interesting servers out there or in development.

One of the things that puts me into this mindset is having looked into the development woes or struggles of smaller open source projects, or even large, very well funded games. In the case of the former, some projects basically have a single developer that might make minor commits to a project every 3 months or even less depending on how things are going in their personal life. Not that there's something wrong with that, but it's just important to remember that unlike the popular cliche, not every single developer project is run by some super genius "auteur" that can single handedly create the next Minecraft or Linux kernel. Many smaller projects also have no community and no official or unofficial places to discuss the project. Those that do might only have 5-10 active members and no real vibrant debate. Minetest arguably has many if not all of these things.

In relation to projects with cash to spare, just look at the absolute disaster that was the development and launch No Man's Sky. Even there, the developers seem to have been somehow able to claw themselves back from the abyss to relatively favourable reviews. Another project that comes to mind is Star Citizen which has been in development since 2010 and raised hundreds of millions in funding...but still hasn't really delivered much of a playable experience by most accounts (to say the least). Even major game studios have total flops, or games that arrive into the world totally crippled with game-breaking bugs.

There's absolutely no harm in bringing up issues or highlighting things that can be improved, in fact, it seems to have helped change gears up a notch. But it's also worth taking a deep breath and a looking outside every now and then. All things considered, MT isn't doing quite as bad as some of us might be imagining.

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runs
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Re: Getting tired of it

by runs » Post

What pisses me off most is all the good coding that has been wasted over the years. I don't mean just big obvious improvements, but even "no-relevant" small fixes; all thrown away because they weren't revised, the fed up of the contributors or the infamous "Rebase" shit.

I estimate between 10% and 20% of contributions miserably wasted.

IMO, of course :-)

PD: I Love Minetest :-D

CalebJ
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Re: Getting tired of it

by CalebJ » Post

Andrey01 wrote:
Mon Oct 12, 2020 14:35
runs wrote:
Mon Oct 12, 2020 11:14
Minetest is running around like a headless chicken. :-D

It is a decadent and languishing project. And everyone sees that. It happens to many Open Source projects. Yes, guys, money moves the world.

Well, something improved this last year. I have noticed something.

PD: And please stay away from the Discord, it is a haven for psychopathic and bullying personalities.
I agree with you. Some regress has been foreshadowed already many years ago. When I first joined it and it was around the end of 2013, I had been seeing plenty of different coming features, especially to MTG. Now I have not seen such anymore and I seem this situation had been becoming after 5.0.0 release. Very few new features/content and if they succeed to come in from some contributors, they pass a painfull way via hanging out untouched for months and even years while somebody of the core devs don`t get stirred to review it and conclude finally. So far even such the MOST common features come as "highlighting button when hovered/pressed" (this visual feedback has not even not added for all gui elements yet !) or "additional option to conceal the selection box when hovered an entity". Of course I don`t blame those authors, just these facts already say about the stagnation state.

However, Minetest actually has a huge potential of development because this is free open project and currently has many advantages over its the original game, but it mostly delays for those reasons above. Regardless all these serious drawbacks, I love this project. It really possesses the infinite opportunities.

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Probably this my comment is already not interesting to anybody, I suppose because of this has already been talked out more than one hundred times by various people through of a mass of different previous threads with the similar topic, but I just wanted to express my point.
I agree with both of you. This doesn't add anything useful to the conversation, but it's so drawn out now that not much I could say actually will ...

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